"What withstands a day's heat..."

I subscribe to 2 homeschool email lists. On these lists, you get the emails in digest form because there are sooo many. So usually if one of these emails is longer than about 4 lines, I don't read it, just delete it and go on with my day. But back in December I read this long one while waiting for Davis to finish his piano lesson. It only took a minute to read and I was glad I did. All credits for the letter are noted at the end. So here are some exerpts:

It’s 11 a.m. here.

Toddler’s crying. Her six-year-old brother kicked her. (Yes, he did confess, face contorted in guilt nod. Toddler too confessed: yes, she did cheat and look at his Stratego pawns. Not that she knows how to play Stratego. Apparently that’s beside the point.)

I rock Toddler. And recap Three Qs with kicking brother:
What did you do wrong?
Why was it wrong?
What are you going to do differently in the future?
And then, as always: Is that a commitment? Can I count on you?

He nods, shakes my hand, hugs sniffling toddler. I whisper a prayer for heart transplants.

Third-born son, 7, wanders aimlessly around house looking for that tattered math book of his. I look at the clock. He’s been wandering for an hour. (That’s including the time he spent building a supersonic blaster out of Legos. But he’s right: he did discover that the math book wasn’t at the bottom of the Lego box.)

Before I offer Levi another place to look, Daughter screams that Oldest Son stepped in her room, oldest son smirks, daughter whaps him in shoulder, Oldest Son falls to floor in Oscar winning performance, I ask daughter and son to recite memorized Phil 2:1-4, Second Son hollers that Oldest Son is late for online class but computer’s jammed, and Farmer Husband steps in back door asking if we can have lunch in half an hour; he’s hoping to give another go at harvesting last of the corn. And pencil crayons, paper snippets, blizzard across the floor and the farm table’s buried deep under notebooks, remnants of crumbled Lego masterpieces, book bags, phonics tiles.

I want to scream. I do....

And what now...?

It’s 11 a.m. and one would wonder what I’ve accomplished. A glance around here and it wouldn’t look like much...
Some days it’s hard not to wave a white flag in surrender.

Clean. And the papers and books and Legos multiply. Cook. And scrub and repeat and repeat and repeat. Wash the clothes. Fold the clothes. Stack the clothes. And watch them migrate back to the laundry basket....

But don’t grains of sand carve stone?

It’s 11 a.m. and I do afterwards what I should have done more fervently before. I bend knees at the prayer bench, intentionally creating solitude in the multitude, and remember again the story of Abba Paul, that desert monk who wove baskets and prayers.

While other monks lived close enough to cities to sell their handiwork in the markets, Abba Paul lived such a distance that the cost of transportation would exceed any profits from selling the baskets. Nonetheless, each day he collected palm fronds and worked as faithfully as if basket making were his primary means of support. And come the end of the year, when his cave overflowed with long months of toil, he took torch to the work of his hands and the flames devoured and rose higher and cackled long into the night. And then, come morning, the heat died away, satiated. And Abba Paul stood in the long quiet and the wind blew away the ashes of all his work.

It’s 11 a.m. and I’m Abba Paul, the wind blowing through and a heap of papery ashes to show for hard toil. The pounding surf ... leaves me with little to physically hold at the end of the day. But are the most significant things in our lives things we can tangibly touch? Visibly see?

Won’t the majority of our work, the laundry, the housecleaning, the meal-making, while necessary acts of service, just too burn up?

...“If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward.” (1 Cor. 3:13-15) That’s the kind of...work I want to invest in, the enduring kind. The kind of work that isn’t washed away with the next wave, that isn’t tinder for the next match. What survives a fire? This house won’t. Abba Paul’s baskets didn’t. But what he wove with the baskets did: prayer.

Aren’t the prayers of our days more important than the products of our days?

And the prayers are the genesis of all that can withstand the flames: love, patience, faith, joy, hope. Our prayers make our work acts of praise; our prayers make our work acts of passion for these people living here. These people we love more than life.

I’m learning it’s always time to pray. Because the house where He lives is a house of prayer and it’s the only way I can keep mine standing.

It’s 11 a.m. and I pray.


Holy Experience
What Withstands A Day's Heat An Open Letter to a Mother

Posted: 08 Dec 2008 07:28 AM CST

(Part of a series this week, my contributions to the Mother Letter Project, open letters from mothers to mothers.)